Busy busy busy.

What a busy few days! My weekend went pretty much as planned. I didn't see a soul the whole time, though before you think I got too antisocial I talked my my friends widget, Pitsa and Sandy on the phone. I baked so much that I can't fit anything else in the freezer... and I've got a full length freezer... I did a bit of gardening and housework, knitted and sewed. Put me back 100 years and I'd fit right in. Except for the bit where I was knitting in front of a double episode of 'Survivor: China'. Knitting a boring thing like an afghan demands a rollicking two hours of junk tv.

(Incidentally, future Frogdancer owes me a big debt of gratitude. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago I said that I'd put the afghan away for this summer when I'd knitted four out of the eight balls that this mammoth thing demands, and I'd pick it up again next year when it got nippy? Well, I was dying to get started on the two jumpers I've got wool for, but when I got up to the 'put-the-afghan-away' stage, I thought "I'll just get a little bit of next year's knitting done." So far I've knitted six out of the eight balls. Future Frogdancer had better send me some kind thoughts when she's blissfully knitting away on wool that isn't acrylic afghan yarn. I'm so bored with it, but I have to get the stupid thing finished. That girl owes me... big time.)

I went out to the veggie garden and realised that I've left the purple beans for too long. One lot are fine, but the others have started drying on the vine, and the leaves were turning yellow. What an idiot I am. So I frantically picked what I could save, and then brought the really dry ones inside to finish drying on the windowsill. With a bit of luck we'll get perpetual beans out of our one packet of seeds. (Even if the amount of seeds I harvested is a little more than I'd planned.) Ah well, you live and learn. The cucumbers are growing up to near the top of the side fence, and I'm harvesting one a day already, which makes Brennan and Jack happy, as they love to crunch right in to a whole cucumber. The lettuces are threatening to go to seed, so I'll have to pop down to Bentleigh market on Sunday to get some more baby ones. Everything is growing like crazy, and the plants all look happy.

I ended up leaving my quilt cutting and sewing till Sunday. I thought that I'd get all that I had to get done first, and then do the thing I was itching to do. So Sunday afternoon at 1pm I set myself up. The kids don't get dropped off till 6pm, so I had a huge chunk of time. I had so much fun. It's ridiculous when you step back and look at it. All I was doing was cutting out little bits of fabric and sewing them together while singing at the top of my lungs to my shuffling ipod. (By the way... I've got awesome taste in music. My ipod doesn't have one bad track. I never listen to it through headphones; I bought a thingy that lets me plug it into my stereo speakers. I love it, on the childfree occasions that I'm able to listen to it.) I was in heaven. The owl fabric I bought with the chunky, cute yet manly owls was big enough that I could play around with what I was including in the small squares. So I have owls peeping in from the sides, or up from the bottom, or squarely and chunkily in the middle. It looks so good!!!! I got most of the squares done, but then I started to run out of stash. (I can almost hear gasps of dismay coming from the quilting community....) I have about 10 more owl squares to surround with other fabric, and I'll have to go and buy a few more pieces. My rationalisation for this is that I must be doing a terrific job in using up the stash of fabric I already have, because none of the pieces I have left are big enough to use. So my frugality kick is appeased, and sometime soon I'll pop down to Spotlight and have a wander.

Anyway, there I was, singing away, happy in my own little world, when at 4.30 I heard a car door slam. I glanced out of the window, at first casually, and then with increasing shock and horror. Tony had brought the boys home an hour and a half early.!!! That never happens..... Within 30 seconds of them walking in the door my music full of awesomeness was switched off and they were in my face. "Mum, guess what happened yesterday...?" "Mum, where's my footie?" "Mum, I love you what can I eat?" *sigh*

But the extra time I had with them enabled Connor to begin his own blog. Since looking at photo blogs like 3191 , TJ Sky's Photo Journal and the photos on Pleasant View Schoolhouse he's become more and more interested in photography. Since I bought my new camera for Phuket, my old Canon digital has been for family use, and Connor has had his 11 year old self stuck behind the viewfinder, experimenting with different ways to look at the world. His blog is called Swarming With Tadpoles . If you've got a spare couple of minutes please pop over and give him a hello. Keep in mind that he's only 11, so the photos aren't gallery quality. (Yet. He's a Virgo, so he's driven to get better. I don't know who he takes after....) He has full artistic control over what goes onto his site (and it's interesting for me to see the choices he makes about what goes on and what stays off.) Who knows? This could be the baby steps of a future career...

Isn't having kids and watching them grow up the best fun? All of the possibilities they play with.... I love it. With having four kids all close together in age, I guess that this is magnified in my house. They've reached the early to mid adolescent stage where their worlds open up. They're old enough to have developed skills and tastes and young enough not to have boxed themselves off from any opportunities, and now they're exploring everything that grabs their interest. Photography for Connor, and to a lesser extent Brennan; music for Brennan and Jordan, and now Jack has jumped on board with huge enthusiasm too; art for Jordan; knitting for Brennan... who knows what will come next? I think it's fantastic. Life gets busy here but it's rarely boring.

And speaking of rarely boring... yesterday at work I moved desks. I vacated the year 10 office and went back home to staffroom 1... back with my besties. I'd forgotten how nice it is to be with a whole lot of people instead of just one. I'm back to back in the same aisle with Scott , and the rest of the staffroom is dotted with the people I really like here at work. We asked Widget to move from staffroom 3, but apparently she likes her desk because she can put her feet up on the windowsill and correct work in comfort. That sort of indecorous, wild and free behaviour just wouldn't do in our staffroom, so she's staying where she is.

Ho hum! It's seven thirty. Time to wake the primary kids and get them moving.